Over the past fifteen years the Asia-Pacific has been the world's fastest growing and developing region. Moreover, the region has exhibited signs of also beco111ing increasingly integrated. If the region has been integrating, it would represent a somewhat anomalous process as the history and practice of economic integration has been dominated by integration under coordinated institutional arrangements, which the Asia-Pacific lacks.

This paper analyses the incidence of integration in the Asia-Pacific. Changes in the level of integration (proxied by trade intensity) during the second half of the 1980s are calculated. An investigation is also undertaken into the causes of the changes in integration.

The results of the analysis suggest that the increase in integration during the relevant period was not great. They also show that the complementarily of trade among Asia-Pacific countries has increased. Direct foreign invest111ent flows and changes in the level of tariffs are found to be significant determinants of changes in trade intensity. However the differences in the per capita income of trading partners are not an econometrically significant cause of changes in trade intensity.